


there's no stance among fugitives.

by cartographicalspine



Series: refuge for a flock [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Bethany and Carver Hawke Live, Dragon Age Quest: Tranquility, Gen, Introspection, Self-Reflection, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 14:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16161071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: The Hawke siblings follow the Grey Warden maps to a terrible place, and Carver considers the family he is trying to protect. Carver's thoughts on the Tranquility quest in Act 1.





	there's no stance among fugitives.

Carver felt that the whole Grey Warden maps business could probably have gone a lot smoother if they had been in the hands of anyone other than a mage. Yes, he did regret opening his mouth at Lirene’s shop almost instantly, but he wasn’t exactly wrong about the situation, was he? Bethany gave him a sharp look, and Tiggs sighed in exasperation, but his sisters were obviously different. He didn’t think of _them_ as “delicate mage-flowers.”

Just…ugh. He was being a right arse about it, but sometimes he wondered if mages knew just how much other people put up with to protect them. Like that Lirene, and those Fereldans who almost attacked them outside…just for this Warden mage. Their healer. Shit, this was nothing like him and his sisters, no. This Anders was a Warden and had just asked them to break a mage out of the Gallows. His sisters were family, were quiet, were brave and sometimes stupid, but they didn’t go picking fights with the templars.

Not until tonight.

They were risking a lot for these maps, but they’d risked a lot to live here in Kirkwall, too. So he’d had no choice: to the Chantry, to free another damned mage because he cared about them more than he hated “the mages’ plight.” It was just another kind of selfishness, and he wondered what kind of hypocrite that made him.

 _Family aren’t the only people who need protecting,_ he’d yelled at Father once, in all his adolescent anger. Adolescent…as if it hadn’t only been a few years since, as though he wasn’t still accused of being childish. Twenty-two didn’t make much of a difference in anyone’s eyes, which was stupid. The Grey Wardens who stopped the Blight, there were rumors that half of them were nearly five years younger than him. Perhaps he ought to stop a Blight to get taken more seriously around here.

Bethany laughed at his snark, and Tiggs smiled that “I’m trying to be mature but also not” smile of hers, and it did and didn’t make him feel better.

The frustration kept building as they regrouped in Hightown’s market, and Carver kept a wary eye on the streets and alleys. His sisters walked side by side, openly carrying staves now that it was after dark, but still kept to the walls and shadows. This was what freedom looked like, prowling and cagey and uncertain. He hoped the Warden mage’s friend knew what he was getting into, because after this, they were on their own.

 _Not risking Bethy and Tiggs again,_ he thought selfishly, _just this expedition and we’re done. I promised Father._ That much they had agreed on in the end, at least.

He hadn’t ever thought about why he was trying to keep them out of the Gallows; it just made sense. Their family had always been on the run, always in hiding, always staying away from the templars. It was how it had always been. Now, more than ever, they needed to stick together, even in this hollow life that Mother was trying to reclaim. _Put up with it because it matters to her, put up with it because you care. About them, just them._

Carver couldn’t have cared less about Anders and his friend, which was like a huge notice to the Maker to make him care, and so they were greeted not by another whiny mage but a Tranquil. Maker, to hear Bethany, little crybaby Bethy, his twin sister and best friend, say that she would rather be dead than Tranquil. To watch Tiggy drop her overbearing composure and cry openly, for the first time since Father’s death, at those words from Beth’s mouth. To see the light go out of Anders’ and Karl’s eyes at the same time…

He didn’t know how they made it back down from Hightown as the sky lightened and the city shifted from the night crowds to day, but they stashed the staves and weapons in one of their caches nearby. Meeran’s people would make sure they were safe until they could get them back. They were sitting on the docks, watching the sun come up along the coastline, after Varric split for the Hanged Man and Anders shuffled back to Darktown, grey-faced and dead-eyed. He still didn’t like the man, but pity he could manage for the moment. And his sisters, well, they just stared out across the water, squinting in the light and exhaustion.

“I’m sorry,” Tiggs said hoarsely, and Carver glared at her in disbelief.

“Shove it.”

She blinked slowly, like she was waking up from an interrupted sleep, and more the fool him for hoping that it _was_ just a bad dream they would all wake up from. But it wasn’t, and that made him angry, but even worse was her stupid apology.

Bethany was nicer about it, but even she agreed with him. Of course she did, she was his twin. People tended not to see that they were equally fierce, even if she had been a bit of a crybaby when they were younger. “The last thing any of us needs is to play the blame game, alright?”

“But I dragged you into—”

“Tiggy,” she said warningly. “It’s done and we couldn’t have done more than try as we did. It wasn’t your fault, so stop.”

“I’ve had enough mage plight for one night,” Carver added dryly, staring at the blood caked under his fingernails. Salt, saltwater would work for now until they found the energy to get back home. He dipped his hands into the filthy harbor water and cringed. “Besides, if that Anders is going to be tagging along, we’ll be getting plenty more of it soon enough, blighted surly bastard that he is.”

“Because we’re all rays of sunshine here,” Bethany said in a syrupy voice, and then she and Tiggs burst into fits of laughter at the look he shot them, and he wondered if it was too late to trail after Varric and see if drinks were still being served at this hour.

It was then, while he was trying to make the fuzzy dregs of his sleep-deprived mind come up with a good comeback, that he thought about how bright and alive their eyes looked despite the dark circles under them. Their dark hair and skin, filthy with grime and sweat from battle, and they were still his sisters, whole and real. He’d never had to think about that before; he’d never had to think about what templars and mages did in the Circle either. But in the hazy light trying to make it through the foundry smog, it was scarily _there_ for him to see. It was dizzying, like the morning he and his family finished moving into their home in Lothering, the little touches of flowers on his mother’s bedside and at the kitchen table, the plain training yard his father marked out for him. Bethy's sketches on the walls, Tiggy’s needlepoint on the throws and pillows. He had no real words for it, not the first time he saw it nor the last time, leaving home for the army and then leaving it to the darkspawn.

Then, because he realized that he needed to get some damn sleep soon, he dipped into the water again and gave them a few good splashes until they were shrieking, chasing him back through Lowtown to Gamlen’s place. And he chose to be selfish a little while longer and think, terribly, _at least it’s not them this time. Anyone else but not them._


End file.
